The state is named for the Platte River, which is called in Omaha-Ponca NiNbdhaska(=khe)
'(the) Platte River'; literally '(the) Flatwater', or in Ioway-Otoe N^iNbraske (or,
more recently, -brahke or -brat^ke) [all with the same meaning].

My suspicion is that the actual source was Ioway-Otoe. This comes from two
factors. First, during much of the later 1700s and 1800s, the Otoe were situated at
the mouth of the Platte, in a position to present their own name for the stream to visitors. Second, Nebraska looks to me like a collapsed syllable spelling Ne-bras-ka, probably intended to represent what I would write as in the Lewis
& Clark Phonetic Alphabet (LCPA) as Nee-BROSS-kay. That is, I suspect
"ka" was intended to represent phonetic (NetSiouan) /ke/, not /ka/ (LCPA
kay, not kah), and that would have to be the Ioway-Otoe version.
My feeling is that real phonetic /ka/ would have been written "kar," cf.
"Mahar" (this really is a Lewis & Clark spelling) for UmaNhaN
'Omaha' or "kah." The Dhegiha languages
retain ska from *ska (LCPA skah) in final position while Ioway-Otoe converts it to
ske (LCPA sk
ay).

Once the word was written as a lump "Nebraska" and subjected to pronunciation by
English speakers who hadn't heard the original, the final syllable was changed to phonetic
(NetSiouan) /ka/ (LCPA kah), or, actually, /k<schwa>/ (LCPA kuh). In the same way the initial "ne" acquired a lax
(short) e (LCPA neh) or schwa (LCPA nuh) pronunciation instead of i (LCPA ee)
(long e in English terms)
pronunciation, and the
medial a in -bras- was fronted to the low front a of American cat (instead of the
low central a of American father).

Of course, early popular transcriptions are incredibly imprecise, and I
don't have any information on the early history of the word in English. Maybe final
"ka" did represent phonetic /ka/ (LCPA kah), in which case, it would have to be
a Dhegiha form something like the
Omaha-Ponca version that was the source. In fact, with this word any of the Dhegiha
languages would produce pretty much the same effect on English ears. While
Omaha-Ponca
would seem the most likely suspect because the Omaha and Ponca were conveniently
nearby,
the Kansa and Osage were also originally both below the Platte along the Missouri and
their languages are also plausible sources for the names of major tributaries upstream.

The practice of referring to major rivers as 'waters' is regular in Siouan languages and
perhaps also in at least the adjoining Caddoan language Pawnee, since the Pawnee
call the Platte Kickatus (c
= ts), also meaning 'Flatwater', from kic- 'water' + katus 'flat'. French l'Eau Plat(t)e is a literal
translation of these 'Flatwater' names, and French names for other rivers in the
area are often based on eau 'water' . English usually follows its own muse and
borrows
from French or one of the local languages instead of
translating.

Not all Siouan groups called the Platte the Flatwater. The Ponca are
reported to have called it NiNtta'Nga 'Greatwater'. The Dakotan groups called
it PhaNke'ska Wakpa' (this is Teton), meaning 'Clam(shell) Stream'.

Essentially, Sioux is a truncation of a longer form, Nadouessioux, used as a
sort of slang alternative in colonial French for the longer term. Such truncated
slang forms were used commonly in colonial French, and several of them have found their way
into English; for example, Sioux for Nadouessioux (also English Nadowessie, etc.), Kaw
(from Can) for Cansez (English Kansas or Kansa), and Ree (from Ris) for Arikaris (English
Arikara or Arikaree).

The original source for Nadouessioux (a French spelling) is the
Ojibwa pejorative-diminutive form Na:towe:ssiw (to use a conservative
Ojibwa dialect spelling) or Naadwesi (to use a modern Odawa dialect
spelling), referring to Siouan
peoples and particularly to Dakota speakers. There is a related, non-diminutive
form Na:towe: (Odawa dialect Naadwe, Cree Na:towe:w), referring to the Iroquois.
Sometimes the terms are confused or reversed in modern usage. The
pejorative-diminutive form also refers in Ojibwa to the massasauga, a small rattlesnake (Sistrurus
catenatus) of the upper Midwestern US and adjacent Canada.

A pejorative-diminutive form is one that combines the sense of
bad/unappealing (pejorative) and small (diminutive). In English
obscenities usually provide the equivalent of a pejorative, while -y or -ie
(Billy, Janie) is a diminutive suffix. So is -kin, as in 'munchkin.'
'Little', nominally a diminutive adjective, can have a pejorative sense, as in,
"You have a little problem, you little [obscenity
deleted]?"

There is a running scholarly debate concerning which of the two senses,
massasauga or
Dakota, is primary, and just what sort of insult might be intended for whom or
what in each
case. Well, it is a pejorative-diminutive, right? There is also a running debate concerning whether in consequence of whatever
analysis one accepts, it is appropriate to use the term Sioux in English. And, for
the philosophically inclined, there is a para-debate concerning whether one is being
insulting if one uses the term in English being under the impression that one understands
the etymology of the term. Finally (?) there is the meta-para-debate that arises
as to the effect on this impression if one's etymology is incorrect.

The whole subject has a lot in common with similar discussions
of 'Eskimo' and 'Samoyed', or, for that matter, n'em'ets 'mute' (the
original sense of the Russian for 'German)' or barbaros 'babbler' (Ancient Greek for a
non-Hellene). What we learn from all this is that terms for neighbors are seldom
entirely flattering, and that it can be fairly educational to pursue their etymologies.

The most widely accepted scholarly analysis has been that the form is a
derivative of a proto-Algonquian medial stem -a:towe:- meaning 'speak a foreign
language'. Which might be a polite way of saying 'to babble mutely',
right? This view is espoused by William Fenton in his article Northern
Iroquoian Culture Patterns in The Handbook of North American Indians,
Vol.
15, pp.320-321. According to the late Dr. Frank Siebert, MD, in the article
to be cited below, this analysis
actually originates with the eminent Algonquianist Ives Goddard. Under this analysis the forms Na:towe:
and Na:towe:ssiw mean essentially 'barbarian' (i.e., speaker of an
incomprehensible language) and 'lesser (or miserable little) barbarian', for the Iroquois
and Siouan peoples, respectively. In this case, if you're pursuing that angle, the
insult arises from likening the snake to the people, and is somewhat amplified
by that pejorative-diminutive.

At least this is where matters stood until recently But the Siebert, another
lifelong student of Native American languages, especially the Algonquian
ones and their neighbors, published not long before his death an analysis, Proto-Algonquian
*na:tawe:wa 'massasauga': some false etymologies and alleged Iroquoian loanwords,
in Anthropological Linguistics 38.4:635-642, which argues that the snake
interpretation is primary. In his view the term reflects Proto-Algonquian na:t-
'close [in] upon, etc.' plus -awe:- 'condition of heat', leading to an analysis
'(little) seeker of warmth', referring, he suggests, to the massasauga's propensity for
hiding in woodpiles and other warm places around human habitations. This
then was extended metaphorically to Dakota warriors also lying in wait near Ojibwa
habitations, with even more unpleasant consequences. (Your chances of
recovering from the snake-bite were better.) In this case, the
basis of the insult is likening the people to the snake.

I've discussed some of this on the now defunct Native Net language list in postings on
the standard and Siebertian analyses.

Now, for a good time, consider the Dakotan term 'whiteman'.
Actually, a lot of Native American terms for whiteman are not all that
flattering. Generally the insult, apparently more or less incidental to
first impressions, comes from likening whitemen either to the Trickster or to
ghosts. The Trickster tends to have a bizarre and unnatural concept of
right behavior, prominently featuring incest, lust, theft, gluttony,
cannibalism, treachery, ingratitude, lack of perception, garrulousness, presumption,
selfishness, offensive familiarity - well, you get the picture. Ghosts are not necessarily a more flattering
conception, however, if you consider all the implications.

So, a certain amount of rough humor occurs in many Native American names for other
groups, as we have seen, not to mention subunits of the same tribe, as the Hu'bdhaN
'Waft of fish odor' band of Poncas have no doubt noticed.

There is no detailed etymology of Dakota widely accepted. The usual
explanation is 'friend', and also, of course, it means 'to be a Dakota' and 'the
language of the Dakota'. The stem is infixing for some speakers, e.g.,
lama'khota 'I am a Lakota', while for others it is prefixing, mala'khota 'I am a
Lakota'.

As far as 'friend', the causative 'to be friendly with' is lakhol'=ya
(lakhol'=waye 'I am friendly with him', ...). The truncated combining
form lakho'l= is perfectly normal for a stem ending in -ta. It
also occurs in lakhol'=iya 'to speak
Lakota'. In Santee the full form is dakho'ta, and the truncated form is
dakhon=.

However, compare this with the stem kho'la, which is 'male's particular (or
good) friend',
and has similar derivatives, e.g., khol'=ya 'to have as a particular
friend'. Although kho'la is not apparently from *kho'ta, and that form
is not attested, it is
reasonable to expect a connection between the two forms lakho'ta and kho'la, albeit one that must be
characterized as irregular. What, then, does
the prefix la- (or da-, etc., depending on the dialect) add to the sense of the
verb kho'ta ~ kho'l=?

In fact, this is somewhat hard to say, because only a few other words have a
prefixal element anything like la-. Buechel lists la=taku=wac^hiN and la=wic^h=ox?aN=wac^hiN, both
glossed as 'to
exaggerate something for humorous effect'. These are both complex
formations, but, without the la- they mean respectively something like 'to think it a matter
of concern' and 'to think to work upon (deceive) people'. The initial la- is
apparently left, then, to cover the sense of 'for humorous effect'. This la- might be a
reduced form of laka' 'to have an opinion of' or, more likely, of la'ka 'much,
rather', but normally that would follow a form subordinate to it. In any event, it doesn't seem like a good candidate for the la-
in lakho'ta.

Looking to other Siouan languages we find in Omaha-Ponca a resemblant form (iN)dakkudha
'(my) friend'. This is found only in one song, however, and looking like
it must be a borrowing or adaptation of something
like a Santee form dakho(n=)ya. The normal Omaha-Ponca term for 'man's particular
friend' is khage', which is not related.

However, in looking elsewhere in Omaha-Ponca we find a preverb or outer
instrumental naa= which
would come from Proto-Siouan *Raa= and match Dakotan (Teton) la- exactly.
It's called a preverb because it's attached somewhat loosely to the front of a
verb. This preverb is
an outer instrumental - outer because the inflectional prefixes of the verb
follow it, instrumental because it expresses the agency or instrument that
accomplishes something. Naa= derives verbs that refer to actions occurring 'by means of heat or through spontaneous
action'. It contrasts with naN- from Proto-Siouan *raN-,
another instrumental, but this time a prefix - an inner instrumental - because the
inflectional pronouns precede it. This second instrumental naN- indicates action
performed 'with the foot'. The preverb naa= yields stative verbs like naa'=...kkade
'be hot out' while the prefix naN- yields active verbs, like ...nase' 'to break with the
foot'. The naa= statives can be made active by causativizing
them.

In Dakotan, interestingly enough, both these senses are indicated with a preverb na(N)=.
But this preverb has two different grammatical patterns, depending on its
meaning: in the 'by heat' /'spontaneous' meaning it can
only be stative (rendered active by a causative if required), while the 'by
foot' meanings are active. In short, Dakotan has the same two
patterns of semantic and syntactic behavior as Omaha-Ponca, but conceals them
under a single morphosyntactic pattern, a preverb na(N)=.

Looking further, in Winnebago, there are no forms comparable to lakho'ta,
but the term for 'friend' is hic^akoro', formed on a third person
alienable possessive (hic^a- < *i-hta-) of a stem *hkoro
or perhaps *kro. The first of these is similar to the Dakotan khola,
which could come from *hkoRa. However, as with kho'la
and -khota, the relationship would be irregular. Without getting
into the details, it's not too surprising to find the friend terms not matching
quite correctly to be inherited. Some similar forms are found in other
neighboring, but unrelated languages, and the 'friend' terms may be loans into Siouan.
When you think about it, 'friend' is a not such a surprising term to
borrow.

In the Winnebago instrumentals, there is a division into a daa=
preverb, and a naN- prefix, somewhat after the fashion of
Omaha-Ponca. The daa= preverb would be from Proto-Siouan
*Raa=. This forms covers the sense of action accomplished 'by heat'.
The prefix naN- would be from Proto-Siouan *raN-. It
indicates
action
'by foot'. This should again remind us of the Omaha-Ponca pattern, but here,
interestingly, the sense
of 'spontaneous' action is associated with the naN- 'foot' form, not the
daa= 'by heat' form. As
in Dakotan and Omaha-Ponca, the daa=
preverb forms statives that can be rendered active by causatization.

Summarizing, it appears then that Proto-Mississippi Valley Siouan had a set of three
instrumental meanings 'by heat', 'spontaneously', and 'by foot' associated with
at least two
forms, a preverb *Raa= and a prefix *raN-. There may have
been a third similar form that has disappeared. These three meanings and
two or three forms have been sorted out differently in the three languages. Dakotan, in
particular, has collapsed all of the forms and meanings into one preverb naN=,
but retained all three meanings and two syntactic patterns. Omaha-Ponca
and Winnebago have retained two forms, one a stative forming preverb with a 'by
heat' meaning and one an active forming prefix with a 'by foot' meaning.
But Omaha-Ponca associates the 'spontaneously' meaning with the first form,
while Winnebago associates it with the last.

Given this history of simplification,
perhaps Teton Dakotan la- (Santee da-) is a relict of an earlier, more
*Raa=like phonological variant of the 'heat' preverb. In line with
this, observe that lakho'ta also inflects
as an infixing stative, consistent with the behavior of the 'by heat' instrumental preverb.
Of course, we might also expect any noun stem to be stative, but it would hardly
be infixing without some reanalysis.

Thus lakho'ta may mean 'to be a friend by means of heat'. One might
well ask, "By means of what heat?" In this connection the name of the theoretical confederacy of
Dakotan speakers becomes relevant. This name is Oc^he'thi S^ako'wiN or 'Seven
Council Fires', referring to the seven subdivisions of the Dakotas. (There
are also, incidentally, seven subdivisions of Tetons, too.) Perhaps,
then, la- in the term lakho'ta refers to the ceremonial action of the council fires in
establishing or signifying the
friendship among the various Lakota (and Dakota) people?

The English (originally French) name of the Teton branch of the Dakota is
from the Dakotan word thi'thuNwaN
(TEE-too-wah, the last two vowel being nasal). This looks like a compound
of thi' 'to dwell', as in thi'pi 'dwelling', and thuNwaN
meaning roughly 'village, villagers, dwellers at'. The latter root does
not occur as an independent word, but is widely attested in the names of Dakotan
groups, and a related form occurs in othuN'wahe 'town'. In spite of appearances,
however, it was believed by Dakotas consulted in the 1800s that the first
root is actually an irregular modification of thiNl- (pronounced thiNn-),
the compounding form of thiN'ta 'prairie'. Hence it would be
'Prairie Dwellers, Prairie Village People'. This form is perhaps
cognate with Omaha-Ponca ttaN'de 'ground', cf. Osage htaN'ce
'earth, ground, treeless prairie', though the vowels of the first syllable
(Dakota iN, Dhegiha aN) are
an irregular correspondence.

Dakotan words that end in unaccented -a historically (not always today) lose
that final -a in compounding, reduplication, etc., and the final
consonant, if t, changes to l (or d, etc., depending on the dialect, of
course). If that l is after a nasal vowel, it is nasalized itself,
changing to something like n. So, the presumed historical development is
from thiNl'thuNwaN
(pronounced thiNn'thuNwaN) to attested thiN'thuNwaN.

This etymology and the observation that the attested form is somewhat
irregular in terms of it are from:

Riggs, Steven Return. 1893 (1973). Dakota Grammar, Text, and
Ethnography (Contributions to North American Ethnology, Vol.
IX). Department of the Interior, US Geographical and Geological Survey
of the Rocky Mountain Region. Ed. by James Owen Dorsey.
Reprinted, Ross & Haines.

I've added the Dhegiha cognate and the explanation of the compounding to clarify the source of the
irregularity.

The usual explanation for Teton in the place name Teton Mountains is in terms of a French word
teton '(big) breast' from tette
'nipple', compare English teat and its dialect variant tit.
The -on is an augmentative suffix. One sometimes wonders to what extent the titilation of
it all may have overwhelmed the obvious alternative, to wit, naming the
mountains for the Dakota Tetons, but Alan Hartley (p.c.)
reports:

From Nathaniel Wyeth's Journal (1832), on the
Web: "stoped on Lewis river and within 20 miles of the Trois Tetons three very
conspicuous snow covered mountains"

The conceit is pretty common in toponymy: e.g., les trois Mamelles on Mauritius, Tadoussac (Montagnais) in Quebec.

It puzzles me that the peaks of mamiferous massifs should always
come in threes.

Essentially, it is a Dakotan word (in Teton form) ogla'la meaning 'to
scatter one's own', in the context 'people who scatter their own in'.
Because the gl cluster has a reduced "uh" vowel (a schwa) in the
middle, this may be rendered Ogallala, etc., in English. The underlying
stem is kala' 'to scatter'. On this has been formed a reflexive
possessive (or suus) stem glala'. One of those things you learn
about Dakotan (and other Mississippi Valley Siouan languages) is that adding the
prefix ki- REFLEXIVE POSSESSIVE to a verb that starts with the ka-
'by force' instrumental is that the combination comes out gla-.
(This is the sort of thing that makes language fun!) Anyway, to glala'
has then been added one further prefix, the locative o- meaning 'at
something, in something; there'. The complete form ogla'la
is 'to scatter one's own in or at something'.

In most accounts of this etymology the derivation isn't explained, and there
follows some short story about boys or women having a disagreement and ending up
tossing or kicking dirt or some other powdered material at each other.

Louis Garcia
explains that while the term has this literal meaning, it is also the regular
word in the dialect at Ft. Totten, ND, for what is sometimes called 'finger
flicking' in English discussions of Dakota (and neighboring) culture. He
says:

Oglala or as is said here, Okdada, means a sign of contempt.Scatters ones own is the sign language sign for this word.
You take your thumb and bring it to the tips of your fingers, to make a group of
five. Then you flick our wrist quickly outwardly. This
means throwing sand or dirt at someone. Upon receiving the sign the oldtimers
went for their knifes.

So, in essence, the name seems to mean 'those who make rude gestures'.
This is completely in line with the sort of teasing names that various
Midwestern Siouan groups attach to each other.

A possible connection here is the Niobrara River. It is generally
explained as Omaha-Ponca NiN' Ubdha'dha 'Spreading Water', filtered
through French spelling, and now given in English a n English-based spelling
pronunciation Nigh-o-BRAY-ruh, but Ubdha'dha, rather than expected Ugdha'dha,
is also the Omaha-Ponca name of the Oglala people. This river is more or less
the late historical boundary between the Ponca and the Dakota.

The Dakotan term was^i'c^uN (in some localities commonly pronounced was^i'c^u)
denominates aliens of European, African, and other
non-American origins.
The translation 'whiteman' is conventional in English, but arises from a
combination of presuming indigenous Europeans and European Americans as the usual
referents and of using a color-based terminology in English (and French). In fact,
was^i'c^uN
and English 'whiteman' are not at all equivalent in etymology. The Dakotan term is
probably from s^ic^uN' 'the immortal component of the soul'. The prefix wa-
here can be glossed roughly as 'something that is/has (a)...'. Perhaps it was once roughly
equivalent to characterizing 'whitemen' as 'ghosts' or 'spirits', based on perhaps on their
pale coloring and strange behavior. Or perhaps the idea was that 'whitemen'
were magicians who had spirit sponsors whose inspirations accounted for their unusual
pattern of
behavior.

The was^i'c^uN 'whiteman' term now is conventional and no
longer
clear to Dakotan speakers. Some folk-etymologize it as was^iN'
'fat' + ic^u' 'to take', or 'he steals (takes) fat'. For some people now was^iN' means primarily
'bacon', leading to a gloss 'he takes bacon'. This is not particularly
likely as an original meaning. The
problem is the final -c^u(N) sequence, which fits s^ic^uN', but not
ic^u'. Admittedly, some speakers do say was^i'c^u, and was^iN
+ ic^u would probably contract regularly to was^i'c^u, but a fair
number of words vary in final nasality across Dakota dialects (including such
characteristic morphemes as the diminutive, which is Teton =la and Santee
=daN ~ =naN), and the nasal forms seem older in this
case.

For discussion, justification and explanation of the etymology of was^ic^uN
offered here, see my source:

Powers, William K. 1986. Sacred Language: the Nature
of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota. University of Oklahoma Press.

For that matter, a very similar account is presented in the Riggs and Buechel
dictionaries, though Buechel speculated personally about an etymology based on
'one wears bad (clothes)' wa - s^ic^a - ?uN. This seems strained to
me, too.

All this said, people seem particularly bothered by the s^ic^uN' analysis
and are constantly writing to provide culturally-based explanations that justify
the 'fat taker' account. I'm afraid I still find the s^ic^uN' analysis
more convincing, but I should make it clear Dakota-speakers generally favor the
'fat taker' account.

It seems likely that the meaning of Cheyenne is something like 'little (or lesser)
Cree'. In Teton Dakotan the form is S^ahi'e=la. French Cheyenne is
probably from the Santee Dakotan version S^ahi'e=naN. The term S^ahi'a**
'Cree' is apparently not attested in modern Teton or Santee,
but it is attested in Mandan and Hidatsa, and in historical Assiniboine. The lack of a
transparent etymology in Teton and Santee leads to folk etymologies in terms of
*s^a=iye=la (~ =naN) a made-up form 'to speak red(ly)', construed
to mean 'to speak obscurely, not clearly', by analogy with the real form iye'=ska 'to speak clearly, to speak the local language, to translate'. The folk
etymology, however, is not parallel in structure to iye'=ska - s^a
'red' precedes ska 'white, clear', for example - and does not explain the h or
the diminutive. Little irregularities like this often expose a folk
etymology for what it is.

Bruce Ingham has pointed out to me that this is undoubtedly related to the
Cree term for the Cheyenne, which is kaanehiyawesicik 'ones who speak a little Cree'. Presumably
that means 'can understand Cree to some extent'. Cheyenne and Algonquian
are both Algonquian languages.

See the discussion by Ives Goddard
(and myself) at Wayne Leman's Cheyenne site.

Note: The term S^ahi'e=naN 'Cheyenne' should not be
confused with s^aha(N)', a widespread term for
Dakota-speakers. The nasalized variants are found in Siouan
languages south of the Dakotas, e.g., the Dhegiha languages and Winnebago.
Omaha-Ponca has s^aaN', with the medial h elided. Unnasalized
variants are found in the Algonquian languages of the Great Lakes area, e.g.,
Fox as^aaa. Mandan xaNnuNmaNk 'xaN-person'
may be related, though Hollow assumes that the xaN here is the one that
means 'grass'.

It's a Hidatsa name, from caka'ka [tsah-KAH-kah]
meaning 'bird' + wi'a [MEE-ah, WEE-ah] meaning 'woman', hence Caka'kawia
'Bird Woman'. It is quite common for women's names in Siouan language to
end in a morpheme meaning 'woman'. (Note that linguists often use c to indicate the
ts-sound and I've followed that convention here.)
There is a spelling variant Sacajawea that used to be more common in English. This arose as an error by an early
editor; Sacagawea is correct. To be more precise, Sacagawea or Sakagawea
or Sakakawea and so on are all reasonably correct, given the difficulty of initial ts for
English speakers and some variability in spelling the Hidatsa k and i phonemes in
English.

The historical Sacagawea was a Shoshone
girl who was captured in a slaving raid by Hidatsa when she was about 12. She
and a friend (perhaps a relative) captured in the same raid traded hands
several times and ended up as wives of Toussaint Charbonneau, a French trader
living among the Hidatsa and Mandan. When Lewis and Clark passed through
the area they hired Charbonneau to guide their Corps of Discovery in order to get
Sacagawea as their Shoshone interpreter. Lewis and Clark were impressed
with Sacagawea, as were others who met her, but apparently didn't think much of Charbonneau.
They needed him, however, in order to get her, and, of course, to
communicate with her, supporting a chain of translation from English to French
to Hidatsa to Shoshone. She brought along her newborn
son, Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, whom Lewis had recently helped deliver, sacrificing a
rattlesnake tail from his zoological collections to provide a potion someone thought might
ease the delivery.

Sacagawea either died c. 1812 at Fort Manuel in what is now South Dakota, of
a fever, or lived until 1884, dying on the Wind River Shoshone Reservation in
Wyoming. Some people believe
that the woman who died in 1884 claiming to be Sacagawea might actually have been
the childhood
friend (probably a relative) who was captured with her and underwent many of the same
experiences. She, too, was Charbonneau's wife, though she remained
with the Hidatsa and did not accompany the Corps of Discovery.

While the identification of the historical Sacagawea's name with Hidatsa Caka'kawia
is quite adequately grounded in the combination of her Hidatsa connection and
the quite exact identity in form of the two names, Alan Hartley has recently
provided a further argument. Not only do the journals include variants
like Sah-cah-gah-wea, but Lewis also on one occasion writes Sahcargarmeah.
The pronunciation of the phoneme w as m occurs commonly initial position in
Hidatsa, as in wia 'woman', pronounced [MEE-ah,WEE-ah], and it also occurs
internally in carefully syllabified pronunciations. Furthermore,
though one can arrive at the meaning of the name from a hypothesis that the name
is Hidatsa meaning 'bird woman' by looking in Matthews' Hidatsa Dictionary, Hartley points out that
Lewis himself actually explains the name as meaning 'bird woman'. All
we've done with the name here is give the details underlying what Lewis himself
tells us.

It appears that the childhood
Shoshone name of Sacagawea, or at least of the Shoshone woman who died
in 1884, may have been Puhinaivi 'Grass (or Brush) Girl', from
puhi 'grass, brush' + naivi 'girl'. This is rendered Bonaiv or even Bowie Knife
in some sources. The final i of naivi in Puhinaivi is voiceless, which
makes it easy to overlook if you aren't expecting it.

There is also some chance that Sacagawea's name for her son, perceived by Lewis and
Clark as Pompey in full, but often reported in shortened form as Pomp (another
voiceless vowel?), was also Shoshone. Pampi is
Shoshone for 'head'. It may have been part of a longer name.
Thinking about that delivery, one wonders about 'big head'. The
explanation in the literature is that the name was Pompey, the English version of the Latin name
Pompeius, and that it was provided by Clark. Pompey, a/k/a Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, or Baptiste Charbonneau, as he was usually called later, died in 1866 en route to Montana
from California.

Hartley, Alan H. 2002. Sacagawea. SSILA Newsletter
20.4:12-13.

I'm indebted to Dr. Jean Charney for the suggestions in
regard to the
Shoshone terms and to John Boyle for confirming my assessment of Sakagawea based
on Washington Matthews' Hidatsa Dictionary. They are not , of course, responsible for
the use to which I have put their information. The Hidatsa etymology of
Sakagawea is actually fairly well known, though there is little comment in the
literature on the details. There is a fairly large literature
on Sakagawea, fueled by remarkably little real information.

'Squaw' is one of a number of words in English that were borrowed from Eastern
Algonquian languages, sometimes via French, during the early contact
period. The source in this case is conventionally Massachusett squas
(Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd Edition). The term meant 'young woman' in Massachusett and is attested as early as
1624. In fact, related words derived from Proto-Algonquian *et^kwe:wa
(t^ represents a theta - a th sound) 'woman' occur throughout the Algonquian
language family. Mostly they're fairly similar to the proto-form and each
other (cf. Cree iskwe:w),
though in a few languages the descendant form is so modified by accumulated
sound changes that only someone familiar with the changes involved would recognize it, e.g., Arapahoe híthei.
Bright's useful summary
of this cites Cutler 1994 and Goddard 1996, 1997 for the etymology of
the term.

Recently 'squaw' has been spuriously associated with a Mohawk term otsískwa? 'female genitalia'. The ? here represents a glottal stop - the sound
represented by dash in (h)uh-uh 'no'. This sounds to English ears
somewhat like [ojiskwa] (oh-gee-squah in the Lewis & Clark
Phonetic Alphabet). Bright says this incorrect explanation was first offered by Sanders & Peck in
1974 and then popularized in a television interview by Suzan Harjo. The
terrible salaciousness of it all has outraged the socially sensitive and
captured popular imagination so effectively that the long known actual
explanation in terms of Massachussett tends to get overlooked.

The etymology is perfectly innocent (see above). The problem with
squaw has nothing to do with its etymology. Nigger
has a perfectly unobjectionable etymology in Spanish negro 'black', for
example. The difficulty with nigger is that it came to embody and
represent a discriminatory attitude toward blacks. Similarly, the
difficulty with squaw is that it is associated with a discriminatory attitude
toward Indian people and sometimes by extension toward women generally.

The pattern of racism associated with squaw is not readily perceived by
many people today, especially by non-Indians, perhaps because the word squaw
is obsolescent, found mainly in historical literature and movies, or as a
fossil in placenames and expressions like squawfish, squaw dance or squaw
corn (a term I actually first heard used quite innocently by an Omaha man). It seems inoffensive to
many people in these contexts, and they don't see
any point in avoiding it, even though the same people would never use a form like
nigger, and may instinctively avoid placenames based on such forms, as well as
fossil expressions like niggertoes and perhaps even the wholly unconnected
word niggardly.

There are some tests that might help clarify matters for you if you believe
you are not bothered by squaw. One thing would be to ask yourself if you
would feel
comfortable referring to a woman you knew with the term. The reference has to be understood as
essentially serious, since humor
often permits, or at least obscures, insulting usages. Another test would
be to consider whether you would willingly use the term, or an expression
including it, in front of someone you knew to be an
Indian. If you think you would avoid the term in these contexts, you might
want to reconsider the proposition that squaw is inoffensive in placenames and
other fixed expressions.

A thing is to notice that when English speakers use a specialized
noun to refer to one or both of the sexes of another ethnic group, or to the
children of that ethnic group, there is generally some sort of conception of
special status involved. This might be a perception of higher status
(e.g., consider Lord or Lady), but usually it is quite the opposite. The terms
themselves need not be especially insulting in origin or meaning. It's the
pattern that marks them. At a minimum there is a indication of exclusion,
generally combined with an expression of solidarity with the
addressee.

There is
something of a gradation here - compounds with '-woman' or borrowed feminines are usually not insulting as such, but are generally avoided in direct address or, for
most people, even for references to another in their presence. Names
(Marie), titles
of respect (miss, ma'am), or generics ('this woman', 'this lady' -' that
woman', 'that lady' are subtly less polite) have to be used
instead. Usages like 'hey, Frenchwoman' or 'hey, Frenchy' or even 'this
Frenchwoman' (in her presence) are generally avoided.

Addendum: The SSILA Newsletter 21.1:13 reports that Wisconsin is
in the process of purging squaw from its placenames.

Municipalities in Bayfield County have also joined with the National Park
Service to change "Squaw Bay" near the Apostle Islands to "Mamikwe
Bay," the Ojibwe term for 'weeping woman'. (The renamers apparently
didn't realize that -(i)kwe(w) is the Ojibwe cognate of Southeastern New
England squaw.)

In the television series The Lone Ranger (ABC, 1949-1957), the Lone Ranger's faithful Indian
sidekick Tonto calls the Lone Ranger Kemosabe or Kemo Sabe. The television
series was successor to an earlier radio serial, a series of comic books,
several films, and, no doubt, a fair number of cereal box offers. The Lone
Ranger radio show was a carefully crafted commercial project and as it turned
out, quite a successful one. It was developed by Jim Jewell, a producer at
WXYZ radio in Detroit, and elaborated by writer Fran Striker at the request of
station owner George W. Trendle. The source for the names Kemosabe and Tonto
seems to have been the producer Jewell, though Striker later thought he might
have contributed Tonto.

In the radio scripts Kemosabe was spelled Kemo Sabay
at first and then
later Kemo Sabe. Kemosabe is usually glossed 'faithful friend', perhaps mostly in connection with
the television series. In modern American English,
Kemosabe has come to be used as a jocular form of address, indicating that the speaker
perhaps wishes to dissociate
himself from the person addressed and his agenda or perhaps just to imply that
he is showing a certain lack
of insight, as in "Nice try, Kemosabe" or "Why [do] you say
'we', Kemosabe?" The last of these is a common formula, perhaps more
familiar in the variant "What
do you mean 'we', whiteman?" A surprising number of animals are
named Kemosabe. I'm not sure what the connection is there!

Though Kemosabe is generally considered to be Tonto's name for the Lone
Ranger, it appears that
in early episodes of the radio show, which ran from January 30, 1933 to
September 3, 1954, the two characters called each other Kemosabe. This would have
to have been after the tenth
(or twelfth?) episode (February
25, 1933), in which the character Tonto was introduced. Plot development
in a radio show requires dialog, and the production team had come to the
conclusion that the Ranger, hitherto lone in fact as well as name, needed a
sidekick to dialog with.

There is an interesting parallel here with the conclusions of the Greek poet Aiskhulos
(Aeschylus) some 2500 years earlier. In the course of his experiments with the
new genre of tragoidia or 'goat song' - in modern English, tragedy - he
added a second part - the deuter-agonistes 'second contestant' - to
Thespis' existing formula of (prot-)agonistes '(first) contestant' and khoros
'ring dancers' (chorus). Tonto was Striker's permanent
deuteragonist, replacing a succession of walk-on townsfolk and old
prospectors.

In any event, the word Kemosabe is from an Algonquian language similar to Ojibwe
(a complex of related dialects extending from the northern Plains across the
Great Lakes into Eastern Canada). Recognition of this has been attributed
to Robert Malouf (by the Straight Dope), but
Richard Rhodes and probably others
working with Ojibwe have noticed it independently. Although most of the discussion
here and elsewhere is in terms of Ojibwe, the actual source may have been the
closely related Potawatomi language (see below).

The word in question has been explained as 'scout' or 'spy' or even 'masked man'. In the
Odawa or Ottawa dialect of Ojibwe the word has the form giimoozaabi. (Doubled vowels
are longer.) Giimoozaabi is an independent mode third person
singular verb meaning 'he looks in secret'. In Ojibwe a verb form like
this like this can be used as a noun, too, so
the gloss 'he who looks in secret, a
secret looker' is also appropriate.

The verb giimoozaabi, glossed 'to peek', is cited in A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota
Ojibwe (Nyholm &
Nichols 1995). Richard Rhodes (2002) reports that this term is one of a
few words accidentally omitted from the original 1985 edition of his Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary
in consequence of a buffer
overrun problem in the supporting software. This error unfortunately went undetected until after publication. It
is not in the 1993 paperback edition either, contrary to the comment in the publisher's
description at Amazon.com. The 1993 edition is an unmodified reprint of the 1985
edition.

The verb giimoozaabi is a typical
Algonquian suitcase formation packing a medial verb together with an
incorporated modifier initial. The initial, giimood-, is the part that means
'secretly', while -aabi is the medial variant of the verb 'to
see'. Compare the independent adverb giimooj 'secretly, on the sly,
stealthily' and the conjunct mode (or subordinate clause form) verb waabid 'see'
(nwaab 'I see', etc.). Ojibwe verbs are usually cited in the
conjunct mode because it is easier to predict other forms from the conjunct mode
form. The conjunct of giimoozaabi
would be giimoozaabid, for example. However, since conjuncts cannot act as nouns, the independent mode form
is cited when a nominal use of the independent mode form is possible.

Other (conjunct) forms with giimood- cited by Rhodes (1985) are giimoodaajmod 'to tell a
secret' (compare naajmod 'tell a story in a certain way' - with stem -aajmo-
'tell a story') and giimoojiikwaad 'to sneak up
on' (compare naaskwaad 'approach someone' with stem -aaskwaa-
'approach' as opposed to the related stem -iikwaa- in giimoojiikwaad).

As the various examples show, in Ojibwa the initial giimood- has variants giimooj- and giimooz-
depending on the medial verb stem that follows. The stem -aabi is
one of a limited number that take the variant giimooz-. Otherwise, stems with
initial i- take giimooj, and others take the underlying form giimood-.

Aside, in the discussion above I have not carefully distinguished the medial verb stems
from the finals that convert them into inflectable transitive-animate (TA),
transitive-inanimate (TI), animate-intransitive AI), or inanimate-intransitive
(II) verb themes. For example, the actual medial in giimoozaabi is just -aab-,
I believe, and the final -i- is the transitive-animate or TA final, since people,
not things, are being looked at. For details consult your local
Algonquianist. (If he clarifies the situation in Ojibwe, let me
know!)

The initial giimood- in giimoozaabi can modify
either the things looked at, the manner of the looking, or the person doing the
looking. So, giimoozaabi could mean 'spy' - someone looking at a secret thing,
'scout' - someone looking secretly at something, or even 'a masked man' - someone
with a secret identity looking out through the eyeholes of a mask. For this reason Richard Rhodes suggests that the term could well have
been obtained as a name for the masked Lone Ranger by asking
chance-met Ojibwe or Potawatomi speakers in Detroit what they would call such a
person.

However, Jim Jewell, the director of the Lone Ranger radio show from its
debut on January 30, 1933 until sometime in 1938, reports that he actually got the
word Kemosabe from the name of a
boy's camp at Mullett
Lake, south of Mackinac, Michigan, and that it was he who suggested it to the writer, Fran Striker. The camp had been founded by his father-in-law Charles
W. Yeager in 1911 and operated until 1941. It was called Camp Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee, and
Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee in the camp name was explained as 'trusty scout', presumably a
reference to the state of woods-wise beatitude that boys attending the camp
could expect to attain. The modifier 'trusty' in the camp's definition
of Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee is an element not present in the original. It is perhaps
intended to convey that the 'secret
looker' is acting favorably, not inimically - acting for the speaker and not against
him. It's a short step from a 'trusty scout' to a 'nasty spy'. I rather suspect that graduates of the camp were encouraged to
call each other Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee. Maybe there was a parting ceremony around
a campfire in
which they were granted this honor?

It appears that the connection between the show and the camp was not as obscure in
the 1930s as it has become today. During that period Lone Ranger Camps
were reportedly held at Camp Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee, so it appears that, in a sense, the show was a
spin-off of the camp. Or at least camp owner Yeager knew a good merchandising tie-in when
he saw it.

It's not known where Yeager himself got his word Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee. However, he is
reported to have employed a number of Indians at the camp, including at
least one
Potawatomi man, remembered as Chief Thundercloud from Cross
Village. Thundercloud is, in fact, a Potawatomi surname, and
Cross Village
is a Potawatomi settlement not too far from Mackinac. Potawatomi is another
Algonquian language, more or less intermediate between the Ojibwe dialects and the
more southerly Fox
dialects. So it seems fairly likely that the word
Kemosabe was actually provided to Yeager by a Potawatomi source. The Straight Dope
site says that Laura Buszard-Welcher (a
Potawatomi specialist) reports that there is a form similar to giimoozaabi in Potawatomi. Richard
Rhodes (p.c.) says it would be spelled gimozabe in the current orthography for
Potawatomi.

As far as that goes, the Alberta Elders' Cree Dictionary includes kiimootaapiwin
'the act of peeking' or 'a Peeking (or Peeping) Tom'. This recognizably
employs kiimoot- 'secretly' and -aap-.'to see'. The -iwin
is apparently the singular inanimate noun (NI) final. Cree
is yet another Algonquian dialect continuum, but north of Ojibwe, so forms with
a similar morphology and meaning are apparently fairly widely attested in Great Lakes
region Algonquian, though the
Potawatomi and Ojibwe versions are more consistent with Kemosabe in
form.

The Potawatomi man mentioned above was known as Tonto according to Jewell, who
remembered that this meant 'the Wild One'. Jewell implies that this was a Potawatomi
word and states that he also provided that name to writer Striker. However, Laura Buszard-Welcher (once again per the Straight
Dope) says there is no form like this with that meaning in Potawatomi. Rhodes
(1985) gives nothing comparable in Ojibwe, either, as far as I can see.

The closest thing to Tonto in Ojibwe is perhaps dende 'bullfrog', with a nod to Michael McCafferty
(p.c.) for suggesting it. A related form occurs in Potawatomi gchidodo (gchi-
is 'big', -dodo is the 'frog' part). The form offered here has
been respelled in modern fashion by David Costa (p.c.) from
Gatchet's
fieldnotes.) In fact, in some Algonquian languages 'bullfrog' is actually something like tonto- or
dondo-, but, unfortunately for our purposes, the word loses the n in Potawatomi, and
changes vowels from o to e in Ojibwe.

Another possibility might be that there is a French form which was in circulation among
the Potawatomi that resembles Spansh tonto 'crazy' (see below), and which
was a sobriquet of Mr. Thundercloud's. I have not discovered such a
French form, however, and I do not know enough about the etymology of Spanish tonto
to know it it is reasonable to expect one.

It's possible that Jewell remembered the source of Tonto incorrectly, and
that this name was actually contributed by Striker. It may be that Jewell merely
suggested for Tonto the model of Mr. Thundercloud, the Potawatomi man he remembered as 'the Wild One'. In any event, the
character Tonto is actually identified as Potawatomi in the radio shows and in comic books derived from it. Like
Camp Kee-Mo-Sah-Bee, this has been lost sight of in the popular memory,
though Lone Ranger aficionados remember it.

Interestingly, the first man to play the role of Tonto on
the screen (in 1938) was Victor
Daniels, a part Cherokee (or part Creek or maybe non-Indian) actor who
actually used the screen name Chief Thunder
Cloud. I do not know when he began using this screen name, but he
apparently used it on a January 12,
1937 social security application. Since the
filming of The Lone Ranger serial ran from November 28, 1937 to December 31,
1937, it appears that he was using it somewhat before he first played the part of
Tonto, and that this connection is therefore coincidental.

In a number of places there are reports that Striker claimed that he made up
the name Tonto by analogy with the name Gobo or Bobo that he had given a caveman he had created in an earlier radio script.
Tonto does not
seem particularly similar to either of these names, but the main sources of doubt with respect to this version
are the uncertainty regarding the pattern form, and the existence of alternative
claims like that by Jewell.

In fact, in the absence of a secure etymology for Tonto elsewhere, the
leading contender has been Spanish tonto 'crazy, stupid'. This is
somewhat puzzling, because, although the
character Tonto is obviously intended to be loyal to a fault, it
seems unlikely he would be deliberately characterized as 'stupid'. He's
supposed to be a a valued companion of the Ranger. Moreover, the
show was aimed at a juvenile audience and was (for its day) very careful to be politically correct. For
example, the Ranger always winged villains, rather then killing them. As
far as I can tell from discussions on the Web, no references to the meaning of
Tonto are made in the early show. It was not explained as Spanish tonto,
for example.

However, if the Spanish word was deliberately selected as the source, it was probably the sense 'crazy', or in short, 'wild',
that was intended, and not 'stupid'. In that case it may even
represent an attempt at rendering the name 'the Wild One' that Jewell had
offered his writer. Perhaps Jewell offered the character concept of 'the
Wild One', and maybe even a Potawatomi name with this meaning, only to have
Striker substitute Tonto for some reason. Later Jewell might have become
confused and believed that he had offered the form Tonto with the meaning 'the Wild
One'. This would be particularly likely if he had become aware
over the years that Tonto actually meant something like 'the Wild One' in some
language or other. The Lone Ranger is set in the timeless, but historically rather brief Southwest of popular
literature and Hollywood backlots, and the Ranger is, in principle at least, a
former Texas Ranger. Jewell and Striker did not necessarily see any
difficulty in having a Spanish-nicknamed Potawatomi Indian from Michigan roaming a
mythical Southwest, but others may have.

This speculation aside, the Celebriducks
Lone Ranger site states
without providing an authority that writer Fran Striker actually
took the name Tonto from the title of the Zane Grey book Stranger
from the Tonto. This sounds promising, but it seems unlikely, since that book was published in
1956, twenty three years after the radio show debuted. In fact, Zane Grey
himself died in 1939, so the posthumous Stranger from the Tonto was late
on several counts. I have found no explanation of this, but posthumous
publications of previous unpublished (or incomplete or rejected) material are fairly common with popular
authors.

On the other hand, Grey's Under
the Tonto Rim was published in 1926 in plenty of time to have served as
inspiration, having been first serialized in the Ladies
Home Journal in 1925 as
The Bee Hunter. This is about a female welfare agent and various odd
characters she meets while working on the Tonto Rim, however, so it provides only the
word Tonto and not a Native American association for it.

Zane Grey regularly used Arizona's Tonto Basin - Central Arizona, northeast of
Phoenix - and Mogollon (or Tonto) Rim as a
setting, and owned a hunting lodge there. It seems fairly plausible that a
lot of the research for the Lone
Ranger was done in the works of Zane Grey and in other popular fiction which
Striker and the others had read, most of which are also set in a rather timeless
and generalized West or Southwest. However, it appears that Indians do not
figure prominently in Zane Grey's work, especially his Tonto Basin
stories. His novels more often deal with lonely, conscience-stricken
gunmen who wander the west anonymously doing good to atone for their
sins. (Does this sound familiar, Kemosabe?) One of Grey's novels
is actually called The Lone Star Ranger, though the main character is the
outlaw, and the namesake Texas Ranger is merely the agent of the outlaw's
redemption. (Say, that does sound familiar, Tonto!) Striker may well have automatically associated the word Tonto with the abstract conception of
the Lone Ranger without knowing why.

Returning, however, to the question of Tonto specifically as a name for an Indian character,
we find that there is just such a Native American connection for Tonto, even if it
does not appear in the works of Zane Grey. In fact, that Tonto Basin Zane
Grey so loved is named for the Tonto or 'Crazy' Apache who once occupied the area.
Actually, they're still there, though they tend to get lost in the crowd of
newcomers. The expression 'Tonto Apache' is of Apache origin. The
term for speakers of Western Apache in
the more easterly Chiricahua Apache language is binii?e'dine',
and the comparable term in Mescalero Apache is binii?e'dnende'. These both
mean 'people without minds', i.e., 'crazy people' or 'wild people'. These
or forms like them were
rendered in Spanish as tonto(s) 'crazy people', a term which was gradually restricted to
the Tonto Apaches, the westernmost of these Western Apache groups. It is possible that
"This name may be an allusion to their different way of talking." (HBNAI 13:488).

It seems plausible, then that the character Tonto has to
some extent a dual origin - both as a Potawatomi and as a Tonto Apache, that his name may
therefore invoke simultaneously both 'the Wild One' and '(the) Wild or Crazy or Tonto
Apache'. There
is no direct evidence for this at present, however.

Introducing the Tonto Apache people in connection with the name Tonto recalls another proposed etymology of Kemosabe,
Yavapai knymsave (kuh-nim-SAH-vay) 'one who is white'. This was proposed
by Martha B. Kendall and Alan Shaterian, students of Yavapai.
Their suggestion appears in an article in the Smithsonian Magazine c. 1982 by
Kendall. I do not have an exact citation for that article. The Tonto
Apache are closely associated with the Yavapai, and share
a reservation with an interrelated portion of the Yavapai today.

Though the Yavapai
were also commonly referred to as Apache in the Nineteenth Century, and are
historically associated with the Tonto Apache and some other Western Apache
groups, they speak a
language of the Yuman
family, while Tonto is, as stated, a local dialect of Western
Apache, a branch of the unrelated Athabascan or Nadene language family. The Yavapai are scattered across five reservations in Arizona
and share several of these with Western Apache groups like the Tonto.

Although the knymsave
suggestion is interesting in connection with the word Tonto and a fairly
spectacular coincidence, I don't believe it
is the actual explanation of Kemosabe. Giimoozaabi is closer in form
and fits the available documentation of the origins of Kemosabe. Alan
Shaterian (p.c.) has told me that he felt the same when he learned of the giimoozaabi
explanation.

At least one other possible Native American expression occurs in connection
with the Lone Ranger show. Replies to fan mail (from the radio show?)
reportedly contained the salutation Ta-i Kemo
Sabe! 'Greetings Trusty Scout (or Faithful Friend)!' While no one has offered to explain Ta-i, it
is, at least, not 'Hello' in Ojibwe or Potawatomi. Both languages employ a
French loan phrase (bonjour) in that capacity: Ojibwe boozhoo, Potawatomi bozho.
Ta-i is also not the hau or ahau found widely in other languages -
the Hollywood "how" - though in Siouan languages it sounds rather more like
ho or uh-HO. If Ta-i is pronounced tah-EE or ta-EYE, it does very vaguely resemble
yatahey (the usual spelling of the English
attempt at Navajo yaa?aathe').

I'm indebted to Dr. Richard Rhodes for a very painstaking
explanation of the Ojibwe vocabulary used above - more detail than I have
actually included. I am also indebted to Drs. Michael McCafferty and David
Costa for assistance with Algonquian 'frog' terms and Potawatomi
orthography. None of the folks cited are responsible for the views expressed
above.